Bill Maher drops the N bomb

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They can't have their cake and eat it too; black entertainers are highly influential, and people tend to imitate those that they find cool or enjoyable. Most of my personal use of racial slurs generally and nigger specifically has come from discussing black comics, black films, black music, etc, and unless I'm some huge outlier, I don't think that's at all uncommon. It's a testament to the influence of black culture on the entertainment industry, but those involved in it also have to take responsibility for some of the effects of their success, and either stop using words they don't want to hear people who are not black say, or accept that people imitating them are not necessarily trying to be racist or insensitive, often quite the opposite.

They are having thier cake and eating it also. It is particularly annoying for a person to be reprimanding you for privilage while claiming only they can use a word and if you use it your career should be damaged or ended(Which to thier credit none of the guests said).

One of my main problems with the whole political correctness/SJW phenomenon is that in making everything offensive no matter the context what gets lost is that there are truly offensive things one should not say in most contexts. Now you have the phemonenon of the Alt right which is somewhat based on bieng intentionally offensive as a protest against the SJW mentality. Ice Cube and West bieng wrong does not make what Maher said ok.

Archie Bunker and George Jefferson were characters who used all sorts of unemphemistic slurs. They were portrayed as unmitigated racists but with some very admirable qualities. That was different time when racism was not popularly understood to completely define a person.

Personally, Bill Maher is a first class jackass. I don't consider him, or any one else of his ilk, to be funny.

I'd call him washed up, but somebody might blow a gasket.

I get why it's in appropriate, but I totally understood the context and I thought it was hilarious. And I'm black.

And if we do not say it, we think it.

Mildly off topic but I've noticed more and more lately black people calling non black people n****r. In as innocuous a way as if they were just saying something like "dude" or "guy". It does seem to always be a male though.

I thought it was pretty funny myself.

It was directed at himself, and had deeper layers of meaning, none racist. In slavery days house servants were the envied class considered better off than field hands. So Mayer was saying in effect "I, Mayer, could not have survived long under the sun and the whip as a field hand, and could only have survived as a house servant". So in effect he was making a left handed salute to Blacks for surviving slavery. Or thats what it sounds like he saying between the lines. So his use of the N-word was the opposite of racist, and was actually anti racist.

Okay, maybe the N-word is off limits to Whites on Air regardless of intent. But even so Mayer doesnt deserve eternal punishment for it. The world has given him his slap on the wrist. So the world should move on now.

Then he should have used the word "servant" and the people who knew what was meant by "house servant" would have heard his message and understood. Also, "The Slave Narrative of Austin Steward" says house servants were bitterly hated as well as greatly envied...and the difference seems to be dependent upon the presence or absence of one thing or another -- arrogance, conceit, light color -- on the part of the house servant.

Don't know why you're linking that Slave narrative book. Its just an amplified repetition of the very thing that I said about the hierarchy of the slave system, and just reiterates my point that Mayer was being self effacing, and being anything but racist.

Just replacing the N word with "servant" would not work. Like you and I , Mayer is old enough to remember 70's TV. He was referencing "Roots". If he had said "house servant" instead of "house N word" it would have sounded like he was referencing "Upstairs, Downstairs" and just baffled the listeners, and the quip would not have worked.

But yeah, on the other hand, if he had spelled it out by saying "I am a house slave, and not a field slave" it would have conveyed that he was referring to the antebellum slave system, and done so without him using the N word.

So I admit that conceivably that there could be ways he could have delivered the quip without the N word that might still have worked.

Because you had mentioned "house servants were the envied class" with no mention of their also being hated.


Yes, and possibly any of those would also have been better overall.

Conservatives speak roughly, and act gently.
Liberals speak gently, and act roughly.

Get it right, Maher.

Our poorhouses, Indian schools, and plantations believed that they had rescued poor waifs, from poverty, were feeding the disaffected, teaching them Western values and a work ethic. They were arguably leftist, just like today's thoroughly-subsidized wage slavery treadmill. Do you really want Maher to be more leftist?

Because you had mentioned "house servants were the envied class" with no mention of their also being hated.

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I said "envied".

I did NOT say "admired".

Nobody has suggested otherwise.

In 'The Making of a Slave,' captives would be broken down, by emasculating them, in front of the women.

The house n- would have been envied by the field n-, and admired by their women.

Under demoralization, Bill Maher is technically a house n-. He does not set policy, yet has higher status than a laborer.

It is apparently assigned to him, for purposes of subterfuge. It means that the labor is set up to fail, which, to me, is a worse thing to say than the N-word; just calling someone the perpetual victim does not get at the root of the matter.